On Wednesday October 10th, in a conversation with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, Mitt Romney said “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

Sit with that quote a minute and think.

Really? Beyond knowing in your gut that we do, in fact, have people who die in their apartments, homes, backyards, on the streets, in shelters, at soup kitchens, and in all sorts of places, in part, because they don’t have access to adequate health care, Mitt Romney is missing other parts of the nightmare that is, for 50 million Americans, the reality of not having health insurance.

I’ve written about my friend Anna before, and I will keep writing about her, until and maybe even after we get health care in this country right. Anna had worked at one of Silicon Valley’s pioneers in networking technology. She trained me, just out of the Air Force, as I embarked on my civilian career. She was an amazingly good technical support person, a great trainer, and one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. Sadly, our company didn’t survive the battle against another giant tech firm and Anna and many other people lost their jobs.

Anna struggled looking for a new job during a pretty bad downturn in the economy. Her COBRA health coverage ran out and because of some pre-existing conditions, she could not get any insurance. Doing that entrepreneur thing that folks like Mitt Romney love to talk about, Anna started her own computer support business but was really struggling to make it a go and pay for life in one of the most expensive areas to live in the country. She also found herself in the role of caregiver, taking care of her dying mother, which lasted around a year before her mother passed on.

Anna and her husband, who had also lost his job, decided that their best bet was to sell their house, pay off all their debts, move to a much cheaper place to live, and start a new life in North Carolina. Soon after they moved, Anna got very sick and had to be hospitalized and have surgery. She had NO health insurance (couldn’t get any because of her pre-existing conditions) and unlike Mitt Romney’s claims about people like her getting free health care, she had to pay every cent she and her husband had, plus they had to declare bankruptcy because what little they had wasn’t enough to cover the hospital costs.

Anna never rebounded from this. She tried! She went job hunting constantly, but to no avail. She felt like people thought she was too old to hire and maybe that was partially to blame. She struggled. Her husband got contract work, no benefits. No way to get her covered.

She started having trouble breathing and once again ended up in Mitt Romney’s favorite health care clinic, the emergency room. She had cancer, bad cancer, cancer that should have been caught a long time ago if she’d been receiving regular medical care, checkups, those things that Obamacare would cover. She died within two weeks.

I’m honestly furious as I write this. Anna was one of my best friends in the world and according to a recent report, 26,000 best friends, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, died prematurely in 2010 because they lacked adequate health care coverage. I could be one of those people, if not for the fact that my husband and I have our own small business and were able to qualify for group coverage (a group of two) for which pre-existing conditions are not a test. What would happen if one of us became too ill to work? We would BOTH lose our coverage. We’re both old enough to have enough pre-existing conditions to disqualify each of us individually for coverage. This is the terror we live with as one of those small businesses that Mitt Romney talks about all the time.

For Anna, for the 26,000 people who died prematurely in 2010, for the 50 million people who don’t have health insurance today, for the hundreds of millions of best friends, spouses, parents, and children who are directly impacted by what will happen if we completely repeal the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare), please don’t let Mitt Romney continue to get away with saying things like “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

Yes Gov. Romney. They DO die in their apartments and they also die in our arms. And as one of the wealthiest societies on the planet, each of their deaths should be on our conscience.

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Craig Wiesner is the co-founder of Reach And Teach, a peace and social justice learning company, transforming the world through teachable moments. Reach And Teach also helps manage Tikkun’s web operations and online store.

6 Responses to “Yes Mitt. People do die because they have no health insurance.”

I am saddened to hear about your friend, Anna. I think Mr. Romney is a heartless, sociopath. I believe that if the neo-fascists take over they will conduct a cleansing of undesirables. They’ve been at for years with “tort reform”, poor health care, GMO food, pesticide increase, polluted aquifers and if they win in Nov. they’ll eliminate any way to oppose them legally.

Before Medicare, only half of Americans could afford health insurance. If Medicare is voucherized, can you imagine an 80 year old, with coupon in hand, shopping for insurance in an out-of-control, for-profit system? Would he end up not getting it, or getting very little, and depending on an emergency room to stabilize and release him? This is beyond deplorable. It’s inhuman.
That 80 year old could be somebody’s grandfather, father, husband, neighbor, or friend who probably worked hard all his life and contributed to society. His only crime was that he grew old, as most of us will if we live long enough, and could not do for himself the way he used to.
What leaves me speechless is that perhaps enough Americans will vote for this insanity. They will vote to impoverish themselves in their old age and possibly end up in the same situation.

This rings true. In the 1990s, when I was teaching college courses for $75/week with no benefits and working several other jobs to live indoors, I would occasionally encounter a student who would boast about America having the best health care system in the world. My retort was: “If I get sick, I go to bed. If I can get up, I go to work. If not, I die. That is my health insurance.”
I was very lucky to find my way into a more stable career, and even though I am again unemployed I can share in my wife’s health insurance. Meanwhile, my brother is in his final month of COBRA, and after that he is in Romneyland, where he can dream about being rich and affording health care.
It is amazing how callous this country has become.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. It sounds like you worked really hard, slowly but surely getting your own economic house to a place where you could have some stability and comfort (and a wife to share your life).

I think we need an even bigger overhaul than the Affordable Care Act provided, but, ensuring that all Americans can get health coverage, no matter what, and that those who simply can’t afford it will get help paying for it, does take us a long way.

According to a CNN report, nearly 60% of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are people who were “capsized by medical bills.” In 2009 that meant around 800,000 Americans declared bankruptcy due to a catastrophic illness.

And… the vast majority of these folks were the hard-working middle class.

Shameful that in the United States of America this should be the case.

Obamacare may not be the perfect answer but it will bring guaranteed coverage to tens of millions of Americans who don’t have any coverage now, protect those who do have coverage from losing it, and will help catch and prevent some of these catastrophic problems much earlier, saving lives and a lot of money.

I am a Canadian. 93 years of age. I have a health card, so does my spouse. Any Canadian citizen will have a health card. If you need to see a doctor, or require basic hospital care, it is provided without costs, regardless of age.

From what I understand about American health care costs as a percentage of your GNP, Canada’s overall costs are much lower than those in the US.

Immediate care for sick people saves health care providers a lot of money.

thanks. This is really important. I too know someone personally who had never had health insurance, therefore only went to the doctor in critical emergencies. He had undiagnosed juvenile diabetes and when he got the flu, he died. That was an avoidable death. When I consider that the Walmart heirs own more wealth than the bottom 41% of Americans, I wonder why we can’t be a generous nation. Why wouldn’t it be better to share grotesque bloated wealth rather than let the weight of these behemoths flatten the body politicf?